One connection I see between novelists and terrorists is that we both attempt to alter consciousness.

When my head is in the typewriter the last thing on my mind is some imaginary reader. I don't have an audience; I have a set of standards.

We need time to lose interest in things.

The difference between the world of pictures and the world of printed matter is extraordinary and hard to define. A picture is like the masses: a multitude of impressions. A book on the other hand, with its linear advance of words and characters seems to be connected to individual identity.

Prayer is a practical strategy, the gaining of temporal advantage in the capital markets of Sin and Remission.

If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things that others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.

The question of dying becomes a wise reminder. It cures us of our innocence of the future.